A national advocacy organization against juvenile sexual exploitation is telling Big Tech that Instagram shouldn’t be designed for children, calling this an “irresponsible” idea from the outset.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation applauded Facebook’s decision to pause its Instagram application targeted toward children but said the platform must “completely cancel” the entire project.
“Instagram for Kids was an irresponsible idea from its inception, a fact reinforced by a recent investigation into how even Facebook knows that Instagram can be toxic for teens,” said Lina Nealon, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s director of corporate initiatives. ”While we are glad Facebook paused its plans to introduce this app for kids, it needs to completely cancel this project. Facebook must put children’s health and safety before their bottom line.”
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Facebook is suspending its plan to proceed with Instagram Kids but contended that the application is the “right thing to do.”
“We’ll use this time to work with parents, experts and policymakers to demonstrate the value and need for this product,” Facebook said on Monday. “We’ll continue to build opt-in parental supervision tools for teens.”
The application is geared toward children younger than 13.
“We started this project to address an important problem seen across our industry: kids are getting phones younger and younger, misrepresenting their age, and downloading apps that are meant for those 13 or older,” the company added. “We firmly believe that it’s better for parents to have the option to give their children access to a version of Instagram that is designed for them — where parents can supervise and control their experience — than relying on an app’s ability to verify the age of kids who are too young to have an ID.”
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The National Center on Sexual Exploitation urged the public to sign a petition condemning any plans to continue with the project.
“Social media platforms are not adequately protecting children from potential predators or harmful content,” Nealon said. ”Instead of creating more avenues for exploitation and harm, Big Tech should invest in making their existing products safer by defaulting to safety standards and cleaning up the content to which kids are exposed to on their platforms.”
